There's a great post over at Empowered by Play, What is the Big Deal About Blocks?

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I've recently been hearing early childhood educators refer to their Smart Boards and iPads as being "hands on" tools. They are not. Knocking over a virtual tower is not the same kinesthetic experience as knocking down a real block tower. Touching a worm on a screen is not the same thing as holding a wiggling worm in your hand. Not even close.
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In the New Haven Independent, "Kids Need To Play" is the theme of an introduction of the new director of the Gessell Institute, Dr. Marcy Guddemi.

So tell me your thinking on the right to play.
Unstructured play, all the research shows, promotes all kinds of achievement. Look, we are about to issue a DVD called "Ready for Kindergarten." With the pressure in schools, some kindergartens are forcing kids to do things inappropriate for the age and they are turning kids off. Do you know the most important thing that should occur in kindergarten?

I hope you’ll tell me.
That kids be happy about being in kindergarten, that they feel positive about school and reading. In short, that kids love school. Too many, however, are being turned off early.

Why?
Let me answer with a question: We have the research, incontrovertible, when the average age is that kids learn to read. What do you think it is? The answer is 6.5 years. That means half the kids learn to read before, half after. To force a young child to read when he’s neurologically, developmentally not ready ... well, we all will be paying for that. Oh, and the research also shows that there’s no significant difference by third grade in the achievement of kids whether they learned to read early or late.

So the lesson is?
The lesson is that parents and especially schools need to know these things. Schools need to be ready for the kids, to tailor learning and the classroom to what the kids need. Kids and their inherent development will occur, at their own rate.

"The child shall have full opportunity for play and recreation which should be directed to the same purposes as education; society and the public authorities shall endeavor to promote the enjoyment of this right;"

-United Nations' Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1959), Article 7, paragraph 3
(cited at The American Association for the Child's Right to Play)